Lay It Down, Step Back
*sigh* *cough* Well. Hello again. I hardly know how to begin, and gosh! I’m sure Inquiring Minds Want To Know…just how Boozilla is faring. SHE is fine. And waiting for breakfast.
1) I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but? Plaxico Burress getting two years in jail for shooting himself in the leg seems completely ridiculous. Someone can be chopping people up and storing them in their freezer undetected by their Parole Officer, but boy howdy. Shoot yourself in the foot/leg? You are in the cooler, you menace to society. Also, we’re looking at, what? $100,000 over that two year period for his incarceration for a victimless “crime”.
2) I’ve figured out the thing with health care and medicine in this country. Finally. Besides the fact that everyone is so risk averse they won’t even say if it’s day or night when they’re outside and it’s staring them in the face, there is also the fact that you, as the patient, are not presenting with a question to be answered. No, you are an item to be stuffed into the prevailing paradigm whether you fit or not. It’s just the way it is. No point getting upset about it, right? I’ve gone beyond ballistic, seeing as how I actually had to figure something out or watch someone live in total misery. And? I DID figure something out. Which given what I am attempting to do in my work, makes sense I suppose. Still, it was grueling and upsetting and infuriating. However, also a function of the fact that there appear to be just too many people to pay attention to. It’s a game of Russian Roulette, going to a doctor in these circumstances. If their favored best guess about you is in actual synch with you, you are lucky. If it isn’t, you stay sick, get worse, and…well. Good luck. The “clinical” model of having to get a huge amount of empirical (” “) evidence (” “) before arriving at a diagnosis (” “) has its’ strengths. Blood tests can be wonderful. But also, it has a lot of weaknesses. It removes the necessity of paying any real attention to the person in front of you. After all, you have to wait for the “test results”. So, the necessity of compassion, empathy, feeling what the other person is feeling, actually LOOKING at them? Not there. So medicine becomes a cut and dried process when in fact a good deal of it is STILL intuition and exploration. Not to mention perhaps a dash of common sense. Obviously, the best strategy for healing is an inclusive one. You do the tests AND you pay attention. You leave your prejudices at the door of your consulting room. Sure, people lie. Sure, people do things that are completely opposite to their best interests. But not everyone does that. There are alot of medical issues people have that are not, as the literature says, “well understood”. That doesn’t mean they are not real. It just means right now, our medicine people don’t understand them. And that’s all it means.
3) Tomatoes. Have, indeed saved my life.
Small bit of nature
You can see a few speckles on the lower right: Lovely yellow pear tomatoes. Right now, a slender thread between me and sanity, but a good one. Panzanella is quite sustaining, as it turns out. Cube up some french bread, day old is good but just moisten and warm first if it is hard. Finely chop red onion (about a half a good size onion for 1/3 loaf of french bread), chiffonade of two paws full of basil, I like some parsley too, then cut up tomatoes (three or four depending on size) (I like the watermelon shape slices in this). Mix all together, toss with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Divine. Even good left over. Lead me, as it says in the Upanishads, from the Unreal to the Real.
Uh, Lemme See Here
Greetings, Gentle Readers. It has, indeed, been a minute since we last convened here for the Ongoing Saga of Life at House of Boozilla.
Nothing much has changed. The tomatoes are ripening apace, and the possum in the back yard and I are engaged in armed struggle. Which is expected to ensue shortly with the squirrel as the figs ripen. Although, the squirrel and I have a bit of detente so, perhaps foolishly, I feel fairly calm about the figs. As opposed to last year when we hardly got ANY. Sure, there were cleaned and empty skins with all those cute little tooth marks in them. And the bitten-into not quite ripe figs that then had to go into the compost. Still, we live in hope.
The Partner is not much improved, and next week we’ll no doubt have an exciting report on the $350 appointment we’ve made with The Gastroenterologist. I’m doing Major Magic to come up with THAT sum, but nils desperendum.
Meanwhile there has been much to ponder in the Outside World. People are just losing it right and left, aren’t they? Calling the President a liar? My goodness. Try that in Iran, buddy. Or pick something about which there might, maybe, be some question of veracity. Otherwise, did you just want to make yourself look like an ill-bread idiot? Then, poor Serena and Kanye, spouting off. I guess it is hard at the top, too. All kinds of hurtful, really offensive, but courageously anonymous, comments on some of the blogs I read. And, The Joy of Driving, of course. I got totally confused one day because as I pulled out of my parking space and prepared to exit the lot, a woman in a BMW (and I am sorry, but really. BMW should give mandatory driving and comportment lessons with their cars. Seriously.) sat on the right, outgoing side lane. I, in my exposed, pulled out spot, had to quickly review just which side we actually drive on here. Then, of course, someone was racing in on the incoming side, which was my left. The woman in the BMW? I bet you can’t guess what she did. Give up? Yes. She mouthed my least favorite word and flipped me off. I’m like, what are you DOING? to her and PLEASE DON’T HIT ME to the other driver who was also, ha ha, flipping ME off. It strains credulity, to say the least. I wonder if they expected my Subaru to sprout wings.
But, I read this last week, and very especially appreciated the part about those who “live their lives putting out the extra effort not to be an ass…” I think this is the essence in many ways of living a conscious life. Certainly it is in the basic tenets of Buddhism (right action), and in the words of Jesus (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) (Just in case a refresher was needed.). Because there are certainly many out there who seem to put out the extra, we may say even mammoth, effort in the contrary direction. Everyone feels that they, quite simply, just have it the worst. They are entitled. They know it all. Their desires must come first, always. Corollary of course is that you don’t know doodly. There is so much anger and anxiety out there now, it makes going outside a challenging prospect indeed. Where did all this constant looking outside oneself and demanding instant gratification come from? What about growing up and cooperation? Not to mention, delayed gratification. I really don’t understand all this rudeness and the violence of these interactions we’re witnessing now. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t speed up the process of the Ass In Question getting what it wants. It’s like being part of a mass tantrum.
So, meanwhile. Life goes on somehow. And the tomatoes are great.
And Further….
I’m still mentally kicking the Driveway Can around. I suppose the reason I got more than usually irritated by yesterday’s brouhaha was a very human one. I had a hard, really really hard, time digesting the fact that this…this PUSTULE, this excrescence, was taking up air and space and resources, and my great hearted friend is dead. I do, of course, wish that all may enjoy the root of happiness. So there’s work to be done I guess on that Other Part of Me that wishes that many of those all Do Not Pass GO. Ah, meditation. Spiritual Practice. Hurling glass bottles into the recycle bin to assuage the urge to BREAK SOMETHING. This is not easy. Anyway. I got to watch Hellboy last night and that helped some.
Flame Thrower, or Rotten Eggs?
Before we get our selves in a twist regarding the reference above: This is just a fantasy I have about how my driveway should be dealt with. I am officially over the edge about the driveway. The rotten eggs might be workable. I’d probably feel too guilty if I actually incinerated someone. HOWEVER MUCH THEY DESERVED IT.
I was going to write about how it thundered all night long last night, much as it did on another September night eight years ago. Completely out of season and unusual here, but symbolically? Yes indeed. And I was awake for the entire thing because the Partner is still not well.
Then, the phone rang and I learned that a dear friend had died this week. I was going to write about her incredible grace, gallantry, bravery and humanity facing a travail that most would have found too much to bear long ago. I got to see her a few weeks ago, because the Partner’s quick eye noticed her at the grocery store. I got to give her a big hug then, at least.
So, perhaps I will write about those things. When I am not so angry at the stupidity surrounding me. This anger involves- and I bet, Gentle Reader, you will not be surprised to learn….the driveway from HELLLLLLLLLLL. AGAIN.
So, despite on and off rain, there’s a garage sale across the street. Parking across the street and on our side too. So where does an idiot wench, about whom we now write, park? My driveway. Not in the parking place she could have backed into BEHIND the driveway, no, smack dabby dab in the middle. There were three small children in the back, who eventually started screaming at the top of their lungs when I.W.’s partner, after lengthy perusal of yard sale, which was all toys, learned to her dismay and surprise that they didn’t take checks for seventy five cents. But that was later. Having spotted the blockage of the driveway at the outset of this festive encounter, I walked out and asked her, politely, and in my Jin Shin Jyutsu t-shirt for God’s sake, to please not block my driveway. Her response? Was that I was a crazy bitch and she wasn’t moving. They were just going to be a while and I wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t moving. I was crazy. And a bitch. Etc. So, I said, you can’t back up, please, and not block my driveway? More of the same. Thank you for being so cooperative and setting such a good example for your kids, I said. She said something unprintable. At this point she noticed all our neighbors were now out staring at her with obvious distaste and an air of let’s get ‘er boys! call the cops! She backed up and managed to take two parking spaces. Several people tried to park behind her, couldn’t because there wasn’t enough room, and left. Our other side neighbors arrived home and squeezed their small car in behind her, narrowly missing the car behind them, which belongs to my other neighbor and is quite the Hot Corvette. He saw his car about to be smashed and entered into the fray. Small car neighbors got out of their car and asked I.W. if she could move her, still idling, car up a teeny bit. Mr. Corvette waded in saying, if my car gets hit somebody dies. Finally I.W.’s Portly Partner wandered back from across the street, kids screaming with no toys, got in the car, flipped me off, and at long last they left.
I confess to puzzlement. And dismay. And? I’m really sick of this. I can’t get out of, I can’t get in to, my own dratted freaking driveway that I get to pay extra rent for because of the Privilege of Having a Driveway. Not even. So I’m thinking that while mayhem will not help anything, of course, and we all have to try , as Gandhi said, to be the change we want to see in the world? A stash of rotten eggs might be perfect. Oh, you’ll just be here a little while? Perfect! WHUMP. Right on the windshield. Really. Because the meter maids never come in time, except for the periodic person who parks there drunk and leaves, so that the car’s still there an hour after I call the police to come because someone’s blocking my driveway. I’m open to better ideas.
*SIGH*
Well, hello again. Somehow the frazzled nerves here at House of Pain are soothed by writing, SO: onward.
One thing I have been meaning to write about and haven’t is: MY PROPAGATION WENT SWIMMINGLY THIS YEAR. I was actually, for the first time, able to propagate a rose bush. I know it is supposed to be easy, and usually my entire paw is green, but up to now, no baby roses. This is an especially wonderful one: Large coral and rose colored, intensely fragrant flowers. I dry them and use in a Persian style spice powder. The other projects, the grape, onion, ginger stalk, succulents, elderberry and scented geraniums are well established and on their way to being Big Plants. I am thrilled. Propagation is one of the joys of my life and given the Challenging Nature of Things at Present……
Which, ha ha, reared their ugly head while I was writing this earlier. So. Also, I was going to report on two things that made me laugh last week. Thing the first: My client in the nursing facility has a prized object, shaped like a cat. A pillow. One day last week, in addition to everything else, the cat went AWOL. I tore his room up, got lots of inarticulate hand gestures in response to my queries about what might have happened, finally got my homegirl up front to let me into the laundry room. So I could go through the dirty laundry from his wing in case the cat was there. Which I did. And, which, yes, is another little piece of hell on earth I got to tour last week. Nonetheless. The two laundry people were standing there goggling at me. I say I’m looking for a pillow, shaped like a cat. Black, round, yellow eyes with a tail. The man there, bless his furry and demented little heart, no doubt just wanted to help. So he said, OH, IS THAT IT? pointing excitedly. Hope springs eternal so I turned and looked. And saw, yes, a pillow.
A pillow SHAPED LIKE TWEETY BIRD. A BRIGHT YELLOW, EIGHTEEN INCH TALL, BULBOUS TWEETY BIRD. Well, no, I said, barely holding it together. Excellent try but I’m looking for Sylvester. (Who, eventually, I did find.) (But not there.)
Thing the second was on dooce. She printed an email comment from a headless, Germanic, anti-vaccination pioneer which…well. I felt like I might have found my long lost sister. I also wondered if all this hasn’t driven me just the teensiest bit crazy. Just. The. Teensiest. Bit.
Meanwhile, watching a program on tv while The Partner lay in quiet misery, (since, of course, there’s no doctor we can see for him because…oh, well) we see that there is no water in Fresno, they’re mowing down almond trees before they die, and the ground is empty, unemployment there is at 40%, and the food lines are so long people can’t even get…..anything. Which, since the San Joaquin Valley produces an awful lot of food? And it isn’t producing it now? What do you think?
I heard a very intelligent person, who is on the grid (unlike me), has a brain and a heart, give an opinion about what she thought was happening, worst case scenario. It really made my blood run cold because it makes a horrible kind of sense. The fine folks who have brought us to this situation AND I’M SORRY YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL WHO YOU ARE, GRAND OLD PARTY , BIG AND MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS OF ALL STRIPES AND THOSE LUCKY FOLKS WHO ACTUALLY HAVE ALL THE MONEY, (sorry about the yelling) are just waiting for everything to collapse, undermining everything President Obama is working potentially toward. Then they can rebuild, again, in their own image, pointing to the failure of the Democrats and of Obama. Endless supply of immigrant labor, check. The supermax prisons they said they didn’t build but did? Ready for occupancy. These days are a real test of my faith, of my convictions about non-violent action. About everything. Thank God for gardening, is all I can say.
As The Head Spins
AS promised. I can’t tell you how much fun we’ve been having lately. I really can’t.
The Partner has a painful, chronic, and apparently undiagnosable “project”, as we say in Jin Shin Jyutsu, instead of saying problem, or disease. Since we have no health insurance, this most recent episode forced us to go to the County Hospital Emergency Room. With modest hopes of pain, nausea and vomiting, sleeplessness and other issue relief. I used to work in an Emergency Room, and I am not naive about what they are like, and what their purpose is. However, Gentle Readers, I confess I was beyond flabbergasted, beyond stunned, beyond offended and outraged, just….BEYOND THE BEYOND at what I beheld and endured there.
Firstly…well, what is the firstly? I found it quite fascinating that they were quite willing, nay even eager, to give out as much morphine as anyone wanted. Seriously. The Partner is allergic to opiates, however, so for him, out of the question. It’s always fun to tell a doctor you are seriously allergic to something, and have them say, what happens? Well, an allergic reaction, Doctor. Or Nurse. Or Whoever. You know, LIFE THREATENING ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK? ’MEMBA THAT FROM MED SCHOOL? Ahem. Excuse me. So then they are not terribly interested in you. Granted they can cross “Just for the drugs” off their list of reasons why you’re there. But then it’s a problem for them. What to give you. So, just as an aside here, I sat there thinking, hmmmm. Morphine. Opiates. Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world right now. Pharmaceutical companies benefiting from the War on Terror? Maybe? Because I was truly astounded at how loaded they got every single person around us. But, onward.
So, there we are, Day One. At the so-called “Triage”, where first you meet a Latino Guy who barks at you to stay behind the line while he asks you questions. But of course he can’t HEAR you from behind the line so you have to step forward and he barks at you and…you get the picture. Then, on to either the guy with two hearing aids or the woman who is cruising the music downloads on the hospital computer to get your temperature and blood pressure taken. Then, after a wait whose length there is no way of knowing, on to the person next to Mr. Hearing Aid or Ms. Music, who is supposed to figure out where you should go. The “Triage Nurse”. After that, again time being the unknowable quantity, you get to go the the REALLY charming administrative people who set you up for the major screwjob billing portion. It’s really fun, because they call your name, see you react and walk toward them, then they say: What’s your name? The first day we were there for over four hours. After which time, because the Partner looked as though he were about to die, I went up and asked where he was on the “list” to get into the actual treatment area. He was number seven. Out of a roomful of people, none of whom were in any acute distress to judge by the potato chip munching, walking around, laughing and general drollery going on. This meant, functionally, that it would be at least another four hours before he even got SEEN. Then another five to seven after that. I took him home where a long, long horrible night passed and then, hooo boy, there we were back at Fun Central at 6:20 a.m., vomiting in front of the Cambodian dentist’s office on the way for extra fun.
Well. Shift change at 7 am so they just couldn’t do anything. Go through the whole “Triage Nurse” thing again although it was all theoretically in the computer. Although perhaps it got mixed up with the downloaded music? I handed the “Triage Nurse” the paperwork from the day before, there was some conversation of the general eff you eff off if you’re in here you’re dog doo variety that transpires in that room from the “Triage” staff, and Then She Said, huffily, Well, I’m sorry you had a bad experience yesterday. You should have stayed. We were busy. The whole tone, the whole everything, the lack of sleep and worry and all of it..well, Gentle Readers, I was polite but I was not Nice. I said, Please. You don’t give a S— about what happened to us. Can you just do your job today? I realize there are ambulances coming in the back but at least put him ahead of the people with the hurt finger today, OK? Perhaps vomiting all over your floor isn’t as important as the undocumented individual’s arm in a sling from the weekend’s revelry but nonethless. So, we sit down. Then, on to administration, where this time? The young woman would only allow the Partner in. Well, he was too sick to talk and could barely articulate his name, which I told her, but she stuck firmly to Trollop Mode. OK. So, I find a seat and within moments she’s calling me in, because, Jeez, he can’t answer the questions. Fine. She asks me some things, I answer, and then she says, in this astonishingly snotty way- I thought for a moment I was back in Junior High- I don’t need you here now. Strangely enough, I said, I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU NEED. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I DON’T CARE. So, that went well.
Moving along some interminable time later, they actually call The Partner’s name to go into the bowels of the treatment area. Which turns out to be something like Hitler’s Bunker, but who knew? So, fine. He can’t stand by himself, we totter over, and they say to me, Oh, No, YOU can’t come back here. This is the first, and only, emergency room I’ve ever been in where that happens. So they took him. Not surprisingly, some time later an actual ER Nurse comes striding out looking for me. You have some medical documents? he said in a cross between a bark and a psychotic croon. Patient can’t remember blah, and blah, and blah. So, I explained it all to him in proper English for the umptieth time, and asked when I could see The Partner. This is where it went completely sideways. When it’s appropriate! he barked. Achtung baby! I said. I don’t appreciate your tone, especially seeing as how I am an Actual Taxpayer. I need to see him. I need to know what you’re doing to him. This is unacceptable. Go get some coffee, he said, backing off and narrowing his eyes at me. We’ll call you. But of course if I’m where the coffee is, I can’t hear them if they call me. So, after sitting in the room with a locked bathroom,one drunk in a coonskin hat, another- female- with acites wheeling around a stroller in for a “pregnancy checkup”, a woman wearing a tshirt saying “YOU KNOW I’M NO GOOD” who gets wheeled in by paramedics, then moments later jumps up, hitches her britches up (thank GOD) and dances right on outta there, and various and sundry other members of a seething and roiling sea of irretrievable damage, and after practicing letting go and sending a prayer for all to enjoy the root of happiness, even those I currently wish to KILL, I go outside to call my client and explain why I won’t be there today, and my elderly mother who is all alone all week which is not the ideal scenario. Then, I do the mature thing. I burst into tears.
At that point, as fate would have it, the Hospital Chaplain was outside, heard me, and got it handled. She is a wonderful person and they are lucky to have her. She also, apparently, straightened the nurse out because he was eventually very nice. It turned out, of course, to be a good thing, because as I arrived the Doctors didn’t know what meds to give him and were about to do the anaphylactic shock rag again. Also, when someone on the next gurney got up and walked out, I was able to tell them what happened and get them to stop looking in cupboards. Meanwhile, ten hours, multiple gunshot wounds and an expensive scan later, guess what? In essence, they said: Your tests are all normal so there’s something Wrong With You. And sent us home with a prescription for motrin. I am not even kidding. I asked for some Ativan, which helps, and they said, oh, gee, no, that concerns us. It’s addictive you know. Unlike, say, Vicodin. Or Morphine. So we are just where we were, and maybe even worse.
For all of you who question the necessity for health care reform? WAKE UP RIGHT NOW. The cost of the way things are being done now, both in money and in human woe, is insupportable. Nobody is getting what they need unless they have an awful lot of money or an extremely good job. But heck, the morphine is flowing at the bottom.
Not Dead Yet
However, a bit zombified. This will be short as we, Gentle Readers, are still digesting the delights of the past 72 hours, many (WAY TOO MANY) spent in the Emergency Room (which, ha ha, if you can walk in, it isn’t an emergency) of our fine inner city County Hospital. Experiencing some true compassion as well as…well. You’ll see. Don’t miss the next installment of You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, OR, As The Head Spins.
